TERTIUS GRADUS: DE INEPTA LAETITIA
The Proud Heart's Flight from Pain
The proud person, driven by foolish joy, flees sadness and another's excellence, turning inward to self-deception and false consolation, which marks the approach to the third step of pride.
It is characteristic of the proud always to pursue what cheers them and to avoid what saddens them, in keeping with the saying: 'The heart of fools is where their joy is.'✦1 So when a monk who has already descended two steps of pride arrives at frivolity of mind through restless curiosity, and the joy he always chases is constantly interrupted by the sadness he draws from another's good, unable to bear his own humiliation, he runs for the counsel of false consolation.23 From that quarter, then, where his own worthlessness and another's excellence are set before him, he restrains his curiosity so that he may shift himself entirely to the opposite side, in order to scrutinize more keenly the area in which he seems to excel, and to disguise the area in which another surpasses him, so that while avoiding what is felt to be painful, his pleasure may be kept going.45 And so it happens that joy and sadness, which they once claimed for themselves by turns, the proud person now tries to possess by himself alone, with nothing but foolish pleasure.6 On this matter, then, I set out the third step for you:7
Signs of Foolish Joy in the Monk
The monk captive to foolish joy shows no tears or groaning but displays buffoonery, cheerfulness, and ungoverned laughter, having erased all memory of his own faults.
Notice by what signs you can detect it in yourself or in another. You will rarely or never hear a man of this kind groaning, or see him weeping. You would think, if you paid attention, that he has either forgotten himself or been washed clean of his faults. In his signs there is buffoonery, in his face cheerfulness, in his walk vanity shows itself. Quick to joke, easy and ready to laugh. Indeed, having erased from his memory everything he knew in himself to be contemptible and therefore painful, and having gathered together or feigned before the eyes of his mind whatever good things he perceives in himself, he thinks of nothing except what pleases him and pays no attention whether it is proper. Now he cannot hold back his laughter, now he cannot conceal his foolish joy.
The Bladder and the Sneeze: Vanity That Cannot Be Contained
Like a swollen bladder forced through a narrow opening, the proud monk's suppressed vanity bursts out in involuntary laughter and even through his nostrils when his mouth is stopped.
For just as a bladder, swollen with gathered wind and pierced by a small prick, if you squeeze it, crackles as it deflates, and the wind coming out — not poured out loosely, but forced through a narrow opening — gives back certain repeated sounds, so too the monk, when he has filled his heart with vain and buffoonish thoughts, not finding, on account of the discipline of silence, a way for the wind of vanity to escape more fully, is shaken out through the narrow passage of his jaws in loud bursts of laughter. Often he hides his face in shame, closes his lips, clenches his teeth — yet he laughs against his will, cackles unwillingly. And when he has blocked his mouth with his fists, he is still heard sneezing through his nostrils.
Read the original Latin
Proprium est superborum, laeta semper appetere et tristia devitare, iuxta illud: Cor stultorum, ubi laetitia. Unde et monachus, qui duos iam superbiae gradus descendit, dum per curiositatem ad animi levitatem devenit, cum gaudium, quod semper appetit, frequenti videt interpolari tristitia, quam de bonis alterius contrahit, impatiens suae humiliationis, fugit ad consilium falsae consolationis. Ex illa denique parte, qua sua sibi vilitas et aliena excellentia monstratur, retringit curiositatem, ut totum se transferat in contrariam partem, quatenus in quo ipse videtur praecellere, curiosius notet, in quo alter praecellit, semper dissimulet, ut dum devitat quod triste putatur, laetitia continuetur. Sicque fit, ut quem sibi vicissim vindicabant gaudium et tristitia, sola possidere incipiat inepta laetitia. In hac autem tertium tibi gradum constituo:
accipe quibus eam signis vel in te deprehendas vel in altero. Illum qui eiusmodi est, aut raro, aut numquam gementem audies, lacrimantem videbis. Putes, si attendas, aut sui oblitum, aut ablutum a culpis. In signis scurrilitas, in fronte hilaritas, vanitas apparet in incessu. Pronus ad iocum, facilis ac promptus in risu. Cunctis quippe quae in se contemptibilia, et ideo tristia noverat, a memoria rasis, bonisque, si qua sentit in se, adunatis vel simulatis ante oculos mentis, dum nil cogitat nisi quod libet, nec attendit si licet, iam risum tenere, iam ineptam laetitiam dissimulare non valet.
Ut enim vesica collecto turgida vento punctoque forata exiguo, si stringitur, crepitat dum detumescit, ac ventus egrediens non passim effusus, sed strictim emissus crebros quosdam sonitus reddit, sic monachus, ubi vanis scurrilibusque cor suum cogitationibus impleverit, propter disciplinam silentii non inveniens ventus vanitatis qua plenius egrediatur inter angustias faucium per cachinnos excutitur. Saepe vultum pudibundus abscondit, claudit labia, dentes stringit; ridet tamen nolens, cachinnat invitus. Cumque os pugnis obstruxerit suis, per nares adhuc sternutare auditur.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Prov.23.7 — For as he calculates within his own soul, so is he: "Eat and drink," he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
Notes
- 1 ↩Quoted clause 'Cor stultorum, ubi laetitia' echoes Prov 23:7 (Vulg. 'sicut enim cogitat in anima sua, ita est ei'), though the Latin wording here is not a direct Vulgate quotation; the sense is that the fool locates his joy in what is base.
- 2 ↩curiositas rendered 'restless curiosity' to capture the disordered, inquisitive motion of the proud soul; levitas animi rendered 'frivolity of mind' to mark the interior instability.
- 3 ↩cum here is temporal ('when') rather than causal or concessive, marking the moment when joy is interrupted by envy-driven sadness.
- 4 ↩Two purpose clauses with ut and a further limiting clause with quatenus; rendered as 'so that' and 'in order to' to keep the chain of intention clear without stiffness.
- 5 ↩vilitas rendered 'worthlessness' (not 'cheapness') to capture the felt baseness of the self before another's good; retringit (variant of restringit) rendered 'restrains'.
- 6 ↩ut with fit introduces a result clause ('and so it happens that'); rendered to keep the consequential force without archaism.
- 7 ↩autem marks a transition to a new section/topic; rendered 'then' to keep the movement natural.
De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae (On the Steps of Humility and Pride) companion
Humility is climbed one day at a time
Take the next step each morning with a free daily devotional in Chosen Portion.
Bernard frames humility as a ladder climbed by small repeated acts; Chosen Portion turns that into practice with one daily devotional step at a time.
- A daily 10-minute portion focused on one virtue at a time
- Re-take the 12-step self-check monthly and see real movement
- Historic texts like Bernard's, one readable portion per day